Developer Blog: Tears in the Material Plane

Hi everyone, Sean “Commander Ander” McCann here to present Demonic Heroic Encounters! These will be just one of the many places that adventurers will get to fight demons in Neverwinter: Underdark.

Rifts to the Abyssal plane have appeared in Dread Ring, Icewind Pass, Dwarven Valley, and Well of Dragons. The Harpers have sent wizards to try to close the rifts, but they’ll need the help of powerful adventurers to stop the demons.

What makes these Heroic Encounters unique is that their difficulty and rewards will scale to the number of players participating. See a Heroic Encounter and no one is around? That’s fine, you can solo it! Are you in a party with a group of friends and want to go after that group of demons? That’s good too, the demons, and rewards, will scale up. Plus, if enough players are participating in a Heroic Encounter, you’ll trigger a bonus stage to earn more rewards and unique items. So while you can attempt them solo, you’ll want to find help for the best possible rewards.

Demonic Heroic Encounters also have a feature that has been requested by several members of the community – improved timers! When a Heroic Encounter spawns, players will have a grace period to start the encounter. Once a player has triggered the encounter (enter the area, attack a demon, etc.), the real timer will turn on. This means that when a Heroic Encounter is spawned, players will have 10 minutes to run over and attack anything in it. Once that happens, the Heroic Encounter’s real timer is triggered.

Players will earn “Faerzress” and “Demonic Ichor” when they complete these Heroic Encounters. In addition, there will be quests in Dread Ring, Caer-Konig, and Well of Dragons that will require players to complete these encounters. These quests will reward currency used in the zone’s campaigns, allowing players to progress through the campaigns faster than before.

We’re all very excited to see how players react to our new form of Heroic Encounters in Underdark. Stay tuned for more information and for news on when we’ll be releasing this to Preview!